Marijuana, a History:

Marijuana is the most widely used and readily available drug in the United States, and is the only major drug of abuse grown within the U.S. borders. The DEA is aggressively striving to halt the spread of cannabis cultivation in the United States. To accomplish this, the DEA initiated the Domestic Cannabis Eradication/Suppression Program (DCE/SP), which is the only nationwide law enforcement program that exclusively targets Drug Trafficking Organizations (DTO) involved in cannabis cultivation.

The preceding history of the medical use of marihuana has provided an outline of how marihuana has been alleged to care diseases and relieve pain. This section discusses the non-medical use of cannabis. The survey includes a discussion of marihuana use in India, the rest of Asia, Africa, Europe, and the United States; and a concluding analysis of the intoxicant use in contemporary times.

Assessing marihuana's use as an intoxicant is difficult because for many people around the world, its importance as an intoxicant has been secondary to its use as a folk medicine or a ceremonial adjunct (Grinspoon, 1971: 173-174). Caffeine and nicotine apart, cannabis is second in worldwide popularity only to alcohol.

The Marijuana, cannabis, or hemp plant is one of the oldest psychoactive plants known to humanity. Cannabis has become one of the most widespread and diversified of plants. It grows as weed and cultivated plant all over the world in a variety of climates and soils. Cannabis preparations have been used as remedies for thousands of years and the active ingredients of the hemp plant can be put to use in a multitude of medical conditions.

Marijuana has been used throughout history in many different cultures to change mood, perception, and consciousness - in other words, to get high. Its effects range from increasing creativity to provoking mystical experiences, to heightening the capacity to feel, sense and share. After alcohol, it is the most popular of what are called "recreational drugs."

6000 B.C. Cannabis seeds used for food in China

4000 B.C. Textiles made of hemp are used in China. Remains have been found of hemp fibers from this period and from Turkestan a century later.

2727 B.C. First recorded use of cannabis as medicine in Chinese pharmacopoeia. In every part of the world humankind has used cannabis for a wide variety of health problems.

1200 - 800 BCE Bhang (dried cannabis leaves, seeds and stems) is mentioned in the Hindu sacred text Atharva veda (Science of Charms) as "Sacred Grass", one of the five sacred plants of India. It is used by medicinally and ritually as an offering to Shiva.

700 - 600 BCE The Zoroastrian Zend-Avesta, an ancient Persian religious text of several hundred volumes, and said to have been written by Zarathustra (Zoroaster), refers to bhang as Zoroaster's "good narcotic" (Vendidad or The Law Against Demons)

500 B.C. Scythian couple die and are buried with two small tents covering censers. Attached to one tent stick was a decorated leather pouch containing wild Cannabis seeds. This closely matches the stories told by Herodotus. The gravesite, discovered in the late 1940s, was in Pazryk, northwest of the Tien Shan Mountains in modern-day Khazakstan.

500 B.C. Hemp is introduced into Northern Europe by the Scythians. An urn containing leaves and seeds of the Cannabis plant, unearthed near Berlin, is dated to about this time.

500 - 100 BCE Hemp spreads throughout northern Europe.

430 B.C. Herodotus reports on both ritual and recreation use of Cannabis by the Scythians (Herodotus The Histories 430 B.C. trans. G. Rawlinson).

100 - 0 BCE The psychotropic properties of Cannabis are mentioned in the newly compiled herbal Pen Ts'ao Ching which is attributed to an emperor c. 2700 B.C.

900 - 1000 Scholars debate the pros and cons of eating hashish. Use spreads throughout Arabia.

1090 - 1256 In Khorasan, Persia, Hasan ibn al-Sabbah, the Old Man of the Mountain, recruits followers to commit assassinations...legends develop around their supposed use of hashish. These legends are some of the earliest written tales of the discovery of the inebriating powers of Cannabis and the supposed use of Hashish. 1256 Alamut falls

Early 12th Century Hashish smoking very popular throughout the Middle East.

12th Century Cannabis is introduced in Egypt during the reign of the Ayyubid dynasty on the occasion of the flooding of Egypt by mystic devotees coming from Syria. (M.K. Hussein 1957 - Soueif 1972)

1155 - 1221 Persian legend of the Sufi master Sheik Haidar's of Khorasan's personal discovery of Cannabis and it's subsequent spread to Iraq, Bahrain, Egypt and Syria. Another of the ealiest written narratives of the use of Cannabis as an inebriant.

13th Century The oldest monograph on hashish, Zahr al-'arish fi tahrim al-hashish, was written. It has since been lost.

13th Century Ibn al-Baytar of Spain provides a description of psychaoctive Cannabis.

13th Century Arab traders bring Cannabis to the Mozambique coast of Africa.

1231 Hashish introduced to Iraq in the reign of Caliph Mustansir (Rosenthal 1971)

1271 - 1295 Journeys of Marco Polo in which he gives second-hand reports of the story of Hasan ibn al-Sabbah and his "assassins" using hashish. First time reports of Cannabis have been brought to the attention of Europe.

1378 Ottoman Emir Soudoun Scheikhouni issues one of the first edicts against the eating of hashish.

1526 Babur Nama, first emperor and founder of Mughal Empire learned of hashish in Afghanistan.

1549 Angolan slaves brought cannabis with them to the sugar plantations of northeastern Brazil. They were permitted to plant their cannabis between rows of cane, and to smoke it between harvests.

Mid 16th Century The epic poem, Benk u Bode, by the poet Mohammed Ebn Soleiman Foruli of Baghdad, deals allegorically with a dialectical battle between wine and hashish.

17th Century Use of hashish, alcohol, and opium spreads among the population of occupied Constantinople.

1606-1632 French and British cultivate Cannabis for hemp at their colonies in Port Royal (1606), Virginia (1611), and Plymouth (1632).

Late 17th Century Hashish becomes a major trade item between Central Asia and South Asia.

1798 Napoleon discovers that much of the Egyptian lower class habitually uses hashish (Kimmens 1977). He declares a total prohibition. Soldiers returning to France bring the tradition with them.

19th Century Hashish production expands from Russian Turkestan into Yarkand in Chinese Turkestan.

1809 Antoine Sylvestre de Sacy, a leading Arabist, reveals the etymology of the words "assassin" and "hashishin."

1840 In America, medicinal preparations with a Cannabis base are available. Hashish available in Persian pharmacies.

1840s Heydey of the Club des Hachichins in Paris.

1843 Le Club des Hachichins, or Hashish Eater's Club, established in Paris, after 1850 Hashish appears in Greece.

1980's Morocco becomes one of, if not the largest, hashish producing and exporting nations.

1980's "Border" hashish produced in northwestern Pakistan along the Afghan border to avoid Soviet-Afghan war.

Early 1980's Quality of Lebanese hashish declines.

1983 - 1984 Small amounts of the last high-quality Turkish hashish appear.

1985 Hashish still produced by Muslims of Kashgar and Yarkland (NW China).

1986 Most private stashes of pre-war Afghani hashish in Amsterdam, Goa, and America are nearly finished.

May 13, 1986 Dronabinol is placed into Schedule II by the DEA.

1987 Moroccan government cracks down upon Cannabis cultivation in lower eleations of Rif Mountains.

1988 DEA administrative law Judge Francis Young finds after thorough hearings that marijuana has clearly established medical use and should be reclassified as a prescriptive drug. His recommendation is ignored.

1995 Introduction of hashish-making equipment and appearance of locally produced hashish in Amsterdam coffee shops.

Oct 23, 2001 Britain's Home Secretary, David Blunkett, proposes relaxing the classification of cannabis from a class B to class C. As of June 10, 2002, this has not taken effect.

June 2003 Canada is first country in the world to offer medical marijuana to its patients.

All of the credit for these articles and timelines goes to and along with our special thanks to www.DEA.gov, Erowid and Concept420

This information was taken from different sources. It is for informational purposes only, this website will not be held responsible if you are caught on a drug test. This isn't medical advice, only information gathered from various sources. Passyourdrugtest pages are summaries of data gathered from site visitors, government documents, books, websites, and other resources. We do our best to keep this information correct and up-to-date, but the field is complex and constantly changing. Information should always be verified through multiple sources.

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